Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1887-05-11
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Whist Bob Burdette HISS to Say About
Settling Down to housekeeping.

Whist Bob Burdette HISS to Say About
Settling Down to Housekeeping.
1t is iadeed pleasant to settle down
to housekeeping again after a few
years of life in every sort of hostelry,
from an open-face camp in the Adiron-
dacks to a New York hotel. There are
SO many pleasant surprises in store for
one, when one takes ones Lares and
Penates, with all the appurtenances
thereunto appertaining from the dark
solitude of the gloomy store room in
which they have passed few years in
sentiment and reflection. You think
of so many more things than you say,
as you unpack the barrels of ham,
mered china and crackle ware. All
our china is real hammered and all our
crystal is the genuine crackle. Some of
our fragile ware / hammered myself,
some the truckman hammered, and
some was hammered when the cask
fell down the elevator. well at the store
room. I am fair to middling light
weight packer, but am not genius.
Consequently, it never occurred to
me, when / packed bale of pressed
hay around one tumbler, to pack
against the contingency of fall of six
stories. But theE / never stored be-
fore, and knew not the ways of the
storage warehouse. | do now. If ever
/ store gain-but-excuse these tears.
have now nothing to store. Nothing
save only one stove leg. And it doesn't
belong to me. It got mixed up with
my things in the warehouse. But it is
whole; hasn't crack or flaw in it, and
so will keep it. have no earthly use
for it, but it does my soul good to see
something whole about the new house
beside the ones | made in the wall
hunting for a hidden scantling with
a hammer and a picture nail. found a
scantling once. Probed for it with a
gimlet until got hold of it. Then I
went into the next room for hammer
and picture nail. When l came back,
if somebody hadn't moved that scant-
ling | am heather from Nowgong.
haven't time to chase scantling all
around a house. So drove the nail in
to a lath and hung the picture. / am
now one picture short in that room,
but / plastered the hole in the wall so
neatly you can't see where it hap
pened.
So many little things turn up as YOU
uncover your long-hidden treasures.
| hear my sister weeping in the next
room over one of them now. She
brings her piteous face into my Lair
and says, in the tone of woman who
is aweary of life: II have found an
other moth" say: ''Why, you found
six yesterday; what do you want with
another?' She goes away wringing
her hands. suppose she found this
one to bring the count up to the per-
feet number. Why do women-God
bless them-go about hunting for
things they don't want to findP
Only the other day, while / was
writing an lode to Washington" and
was trying to think of a rhyme for
Ratchet, she called me downstairs.
She said: II believe there is something
alive in that barrel" said in my native
language, which always comes back to
me in moments of anger: "Aw-w-w-wr'
The idiom is untransfatable. Only
men who have used it know
what it means; to all others it is the
Unknowable. / stood on my head in
that barrel to grasp at the straw and
crush her idle fears, and may I never
see the penitentiary if a procession of
starveling mice didn't stampede up my
back and jump off my waving legs. I
did not come out of that barrel so
hastily as you might suppose. My in
tention was to come out rather abrupt
ly, but / checked it. A nail foot
long, which ran into my back eighteen
inches, helped me to passe. They had
to knock the other head of the barrel
in and let me crawl through that way.
am now a teetotaller, but [ had nail
that day that for staying qualities beat
any "neat licker'' that ever introduced
fallen man to the james jambs. Robert
j. Burdette, IN Brooklyn Eagle.